


Last Battle

by AceyEnn



Series: Pearlmethystbomb 2.0 [4]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, POV Second Person, ideas that were better in my head, pearlmethystbomb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 11:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6049687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceyEnn/pseuds/AceyEnn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amethyst loses something very close to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Battle

**Author's Note:**

> I actually had a LOT of ideas for this basic scenario, and I might write a more fleshed-out and well-done version later on, but TIME CRUNCH.

 

Your last fight with Pearl happened during the final battle for Earth.

 

“Pearl, just...you can’t keep fighting like this,” you’d insisted. “Look at your gem, it’s a fucking miracle that you’re still able to  _ move _ \--”

 

“I’m  _ fine _ ,” she’d snapped back. Even as the large crack in her gem caused her form to begin glitching, she moved forward. “One more attack should do it, and  _ then _ we can go get Steven and--”

 

“We don’t have  _ time _ for that and you damn well know it!”

 

“Amethyst, just  _ let me do this _ .”

 

You hadn’t pushed it any further. You couldn’t bring yourself to.

 

You wish you had.

 

She’d managed to poof Yellow Diamond, miraculously, but the fight had greatly exacerbated the crack, and when you got to Pearl, she was lying on the ground, her gem cleaved nearly in two with smaller cracks covering the surface.. 

 

How she could maintain any sort of form in such a state was beyond you.

 

Garnet went and crushed and bubbled what was left of the Diamond, while Steven tried to heal Pearl--his healing spit had been working fine for years now, there seemed to be no reason it  _ wouldn’t _ work. And yet it wasn’t much help. Maybe the crack went down too deep, or maybe it was just too extensive. He tried over and over, practically drenching her gem with saliva, before Connie took him by the hand and led him off.

 

“We’ll figure something out,” she’d told him, and you had wanted to believe her. You  _ did _ believe her then, actually, and you nodded to Steven before hefting Pearl up into your arms and carrying her back towards the temple.

 

“It’s okay, P,” you whispered. “We won.”

 

She smiled up at you, and spoke with what seemed to be tremendous effort. “We won.”

 

\---

 

She hung on longer than anyone could’ve expected, and you wonder to this day if that was truly a good thing.

  
That last week saw Pearl’s ever-deteriorating form laid up in Steven’s old bed, with you and the others watching over her. Steven kept trying to heal her, and it broke your heart to watch; Greg brought the duct tape over at one point, in the vain hope that they could hold it--hold  _ her _ \--together long enough to take her to Rose’s fountain, and that broke your heart even more. 

 

Eventually you all gave up--it was clear that there was a certain point where no healing tears, no healing spit, could fix the damage that had been done. You just waited for her to poof, all ready to bubble her gem the instant she did.

 

It wound up being you who spent the most time with her. Funny--just a few short years before, you would barely have been able to stand Pearl’s continued presence for more than a few hours, and it wasn’t until she was half-dead that you could just sit there with her and  _ talk _ to her.

 

(You hated yourself for that.)

 

You just sat there on the bed, running your fingers through her hair and playing old home videos on Steven’s TV. It was more for your benefit than Pearl’s; you weren’t even sure she could hear or see by that point. If she could, she wasn’t reacting much. All her energy seemed to go towards maintaining her physical form, and even that was disintegrating further by the hour.

 

She finally turned her head a bit to the side, and lifted a hand up to your cheek.

 

“Don’t cry.”

 

“I’m--I’m not crying.”

 

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

 

“...I’m sorry too, Pearl.” You took that hand in yours, clutching it to your own gem. “I’m so fucking sorry. I love you, and I should’ve tried harder to stop you, and--”

 

“Quiet.”

 

“...Okay.”

 

She looked up at you with glassy eyes. “I love...you too.”

 

You thought you saw her smile when she poofed, and as you crushed both halves of her gem in your palm, you wondered what someone like  _ you _ could’ve done to deserve a smile like that.

 

\---

 

You spend a lot of time in the Burning Room these days, cradling a purple bubble filled with shimmering white dust, and you think about what you said to her that day.

 

_ “We won.” _

  
  


Maybe you did. No, you  _ definitely _ did, but it feels like such a hollow victory.

 

Because that day, you lost what really mattered to you.


End file.
